Overview

This standard defines PHY and MAC mechanisms for Wireless Personal Area
Networks (WPAN) known as Peer Aware Communications (PAC). PAC is optimized for peer to
peer and infrastructureless communications with fully distributed coordination.

Current Status

TG8 received NesCom
approval on March 30th 2012. Call for Applications was issued. TG8 held
its first meeting at the 802.15 Interim meeting in Atlanta May 2012.
During the meeting, the group selected TG officers. Presentations were
given on response to Call for Applications, and agreed on the TG
procedure and timeline.

TG8
approved Technical Guidance Document and Channel Models Document during
the July 2012 meeting. Call for Proposals was issued during the March
2013 meeting. TG8 started discussing PAC Framework Document, based on
submitted proposals, from the September 2013 meeting. PAC Framework
Document was approved and Call for Contributions is issued during the
January 2014 meeting. TG8 started discussing harmonization of proposals
targeting the specification draft during the July 2014 meeting.

During
the September 2014 meeting, TG8 started drafting the specification for
high level MAC items, including network synchronization, frame
structure, data transmission period, discovery and peering. The UWB PHY
specification was presented for data transmission. During the November
meeting, TG8 began to introduce specification text for: distributed
network synchronization procedure, frequency channel selection,
distributed open-loop power control for the CFP, narrowband, wideband
and UWB PHYs. TG8 started discussing about security for PAC and
adaptive random access for the CAP.

During the January 2015 meeting, TG8 started defining MAC/PHY
superframe parameters for synchronization, discovery, peering and
communication period. Also, TG8 started discussing MAC/PHY General
Requirements and Services and ranging for the UWB PHY. During the March
2015 meeting, TG8 finished the distributed network synchronization
specification, channel scanning, PHY general requirements and services,
MAC architecture and MAC Tx, Rx, and Ack scheme. During the May 2015
meeting, TG8 finished editorial changes to acronyms, definitions and
general description of the specification; Also TG8 addressed MAC topics
as MAC commands, channel access, device discovery and MAC addressing
for unicast and multicast.